The information on software installed in a server may be collected by what is called the management program (also referred to as the management tool). The management program includes, for instance, a management program for an operating system (OS), a management program (such as UpdateAdvisor) provided by a software vendor, and a management program (software management product) introduced by a user. Target software, from which information is to be collected, may vary with management program. For this reason, a situation is assumed in which in order to collect information on each software installed in a server, information is collected from multiple management programs. Thus, a technique for managing information collected from multiple management programs in an integrated manner has been proposed. For instance, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2014-56340, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2016-45627, and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2010-224773 are disclosed as related art.
In the technique mentioned above, information on the same software may be collected by multiple management programs. However, even information on the same software may be collected in a different format of software name and version depending on management program. Thus, pieces of information collected by management programs are not considered to be the same software, and the pieces of information collected from multiple management programs may not be managed in a unified manner. In consideration of the situation, when information on each software installed in a device is collected by multiple programs, it is desirable that a program which collects information may be determined for each software.